1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method/algorithm for embedding data in color/grayscale digital data. The method/algorithm of the present invention, which enables fast data embedding, may be embodied in an apparatus such as a computer, or as a program of instructions (e.g., software) embodied on a machine-readable medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
Digital data embedding refers to the addition of information content to a digital medium. Mathematical techniques that operate at the constructive level of the particular media are typically employed to add the information. The digital medium can take any of a variety of forms, including still digital data, audio and video. Among those forms, digital media includes various sub-categories: image, graphics, text, mixed mode, etc.
The added information content can be used for different purposes, such as to prevent tampering with the image, to identify ownership or the intended recipient of a digital image, or to detect tampering of a digital medium. What additional information is embedded and the manner in which it is embedded depend to a large extent on the purpose for which the embedded data will be used, but the basic embedding technique has been substantially the same. That is, previous data embedding methods have focused primarily on embedding data by adding a small signal to the original image data. The present invention provides a different approach to data embedding.